Planning for the Deep Impact mission began in 1999. It culminates on July 4, 2005, when a “fly-by” spacecraft will release a smaller “impactor” spacecraft, which will smash into comet Tempel 1 at 37,000 kilometers (22,000 miles) per hour…. The impact is expected to create a crater 100 meters in diameter and up to 30…
Trolling is like playing chess – there is a point to the game, and that point is to win. Unlike chess, though, there are various ways of winning for the internet troll. These might include: gaining credence for false and invidious ideas driving bona fide list members, and/or particular groups, out of the mailing list…
Canterbury Tales: A Quick Link RoundupLiteracy Weblog) Online Google searches for Chaucer typically point to watered-down “study guides.” There is a real need for good online material on Chaucer, and there are good sites online that attempt to more than serve the lowest common denominator. A student backed out of an oral presentation topic late…
Like all men of the Library, I have traveled in my youth; I have wandered in search of a book, perhaps the catalogue of catalogues; now that my eyes can hardly decipher what I write, I am preparing to die just a few leagues from the hexagon in which I was born. Once I am…
Donald sat in the corner of the room, barely illuminated by the dim moonlight filtering through the window. He was trembling badly; the events of the last few hours still storming through his mind. How the hell could he have known? How could he have known? He brought his shaking hands up to his face,…
A Selection from the Posthumously Published Ernest Hemingway Choose-Your-Own-Adventure, A Very Short Death, c.1959 It was late summer and you were alone in the café. You were sipping vermouth and reading about the war. You liked the way the vermouth tasted good when you drank it with your mouth. The war was going badly. You…
“I always say that while I can’t vote, I can damn sure make a difference,” he said. “It doesn’t feel odd, it shouldn’t feel odd, because all Americans should be doing this. We as a country need to be more involved, especially our youth.” —Stephen Yellin —Teen Blogger Heads Online (Wired) I’m being called away, but…
“The most complicated machine ever built got knocked out of the sky by a pound and a half of foam. I don’t know how any of us could have seen that coming. The message that sends me is, we are walking the razor’s edge.” — Flight director Paul Hill —Columbia’s Final Minutes (Newsday) Similar:In April 2000,…
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—‘She’s a Flight Risk’ Resumes Isabella v has started posting again, after a long hiatus (which I noted in December). I only learned about it after getting an e-mail from “isagirl@hushmail.com” responding to a blog entry I wrote last year. Similar:Hanging with the rude mechanicals @setonhilluniversityA Midsummer Night’s Dream.Culture#PPTPlaytime adaptation of The Merchant of Venice.Top…
We copulate, we procreate, the species thrives. Love and every other emotion that we connect to it are the froth of nature‘swildness. But if it is froth, it is wonderful froth. But I think that stepping back and admitting that romantic love is not an entity with a life of its own allows us to…
In this assignment you will be required to read/play and answer questions about a book from the Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) series of ?gamebooks.? The series was published 1979-1998. Many people assume that electronic literature (interactive fiction, hypertext, what-have-you) is simply a souped up version of CYOA. The purpose of this assignment is to…
Torill Mortensen has a post today referencing the ongoing debate about gender balance in the blogosphere. Are there more men, or more women? Are the men or the women more visible? —Liz Lawley, Academic Women and the Blogosphere (Misbehaving) I found this discussion interesting, especially in light of Andrew Orlowski’s sneering dismissal of bloggers as mostly teenage girls. At our…
“Not only are we going to New Hampshire …, we’re going to South Carolina and Oklahoma and Arizona and North Dakota and New Mexico, and we’re going to California and Texas and New York! And we’re going to South Dakota and Oregon and Washington and Michigan. And then we’re going to Washington, D.C. to take…
Open Source in EducationVarious, via KairosNews) KairosNews has a few good links to articles about the open source movement. “Open Source and Education: A Sea Change?” is a roundup of links to recent “rumblings” on open-source content. Most exciting is the Chronicle of Higher Ed’s report on a multi-million-dollar effort to create an open-source course-management…
“Let me see if I can state what is bothering you. I could tell you before the test what to study, what material you should memorize to do well, but I’m not doing that.” She smiles a little and says, “Yes.” I continue, “I could do that, I could tell you, exactly, all that you…
Mars Express, circling high above the surface, made the discovery on the Red Planet’s south pole, said agency scientist Jean-Pierre Bibring — an indication that Mars may once have sustained life. —Europe probe detects Mars water ice (CNN) Interesting… CNN’s European version of the Mars story says “More than 40 years of Mars exploration have yielded…
A few questions spring out from this. It is generally accepted that giving credit for creation is important; is it the same for ?link discovery credit?? Will (should) the practice of linking to sources of links come to be taken very seriously by bloggers, out of a shared concern to keep things fair and transparent,…
I wanted to tell you that I am scared to death of your class… Give me something known. I don’t know how to read something and figure out the unknown conflicts. I believe what someone tells me. I don’t take hints. If someone wants me to know something they need to tell me. I am…
I’m busy working on the new t-shirt order page and getting the forums back up and running, but I don’t think you care. All you want are more emotions. You all are animals! Animals I tell you! —Emo Eric —Eric Conveys an EmotionEmotionEric.com) From “Happiness” to “Getting a great idea… while falling to your doom,”…